I know this is a controversial opinion here and there's a lot to complain about Google and Youtube leadership, but my best client is actually paying for Youtube Premium. It surprises me that I derive more value from YT than other streaming services. We can discuss if the pricing is fair or not, but we already pay for Netflix/Prime/HBO/etc and everybody seems okay with that (except for the recent prices increases in some regions). I'd like to understand the reasons people are spending (so much?) time on testing browsers and blockers in this case, when the widespread opinion seems to be that creators should be compensated for their work.
Regarding pricing, they need to decouple it from YouTube Music. I have a music streaming service and I’m not changing. Currently the price is too high and imagine the bundling is part of the reason.
Interesting. I started on the other side, as a Google Music subscriber years ago and only realized how much I appreciated YouTube Red later on.
Of course, as soon as my credit card date needed to be updated, they kicked me off of the introductory pricing I was told I could keep forever. It's now about double that price (your price may vary for "reasons"). Then they killed Google Music in favor of the inferior YouTube Music.
This is it for me. I am doing a YouTube Prime trial, and I have found that the removal of ads is the only feature I care for, and the price is simply way too high for that.
I was excited about downloading videos for offline viewing, but it turns out I can't download them to my laptop (only to my phone), so that's a feature I won't use after all.
I'm not interested in the music streaming service or any of the other features, either.
So ad removal is the only feature I'm using. I would pay half of what they are charging currently for just ad removal alone, but since that's not an option, I am about to cancel the trial and return to traditional adblocking.
That's very specific to you though - nobody I know is watching YouTube over mainstream content (although I'm sure this is different for younger people). The only reason I was subscribing was that I watch the occasional podcast (maybe a few times per week) on my TV (so I can't adblock). They litter those videos with ads to the point it's unwatchable. £12.99 a month (more than Spotify, Netflix, Disney etc.) is so expensive that I'll just not watch. Decouple and give me no ads for even £7.99 and I'll do it.
But you can access YouTube content for free. You aren't paying for access to the content like you do with other services; you are paying just for ad removal.
I think if you refuse to watch ads the difference is moot.
And it’s fine that people who ad block get the service for free but they’re going to be playing a cat and mouse game forever, the same way I could get the New York Times for free if I threw links at archive.is, but if I’m a regular reader that experience is going to suck to the point of a subscription being worth it.
I also think that all of these streaming services are so ridiculously affordable compared to most other life expenses. Nobody seems to mind spending $12 on one trip to McDonald’s or Starbucks for product that only lasts a fraction of a day but somehow a month of watching zero ads on YouTube with a few extra features thrown in isn’t worth the price.
Not everyone makes the same income, has the same expenses, or has the same priorities.
I disabled adblock about a month before started my YouTube trial because I wanted to do a fair comparison. What I have found is that the removal of ads is simply not worth the $18/month YouTube Premium costs in my country. For that price, I would rather just see ads even without any adblocker.
There are a LOT of things I could spend $216 on that would give me more pleasure than not seeing YouTube ads for a year. Even better, I could just reconfigure my adblocker a couple of times a year (something I already do due to the malware arms race). That's way better than cutting $216 out of my hobby budget.
Now, if I had the option to get YouTube Premium (or some reduced version of that only offered ad removal) for about half the current price, then it would probably be worth it.
(And no, I do not buy fast food, either. It is more expensive and tastes worse than something I can whip together at home.)
When I want to compensate creators for their work I subscribe to Nebula or Patreon. YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time (consider: summoning salt’s multi-hour analysis of Megaman speedruns had to fight demonetization for literally days! We still have no real idea what the root cause was!)
>YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time
It's a networking effect, unfortunately. While there are some very talented creators out there, there is an oder of magnitude between "is a great creator that quickly gathers an audience" and "a creator whose audience will move en masse with them to a new platform". Microsoft spent hundreds of millions trying to appeal to the latter with Mixer and it just didn't cut through despite having exclusive access to some of the largest streamers.
It's tough, and user apathy means it's hard to move off, even if you happen to find someone else to pay.
> When I want to compensate creators for their work I subscribe to Nebula or Patreon. YouTube stifles creators and creator success happens in spite of the platform a lot of the time.
While I do agree that platforms in general tend to "stifle" creators it shouldn't be discounted how much YouTube actually does pay them. Especially in comparison to other platforms, e.g., TikTok, Instagram or Twitch, it seems to be quite fair. Though if you want to just compensate the creator other avenues tend to be far more better in terms money in from you -> money out to the creator.
Why? They put up content on the web that people can watch without paying for it. Why would I stop viewing that content just because I don't want to pay their premium price?
Be it from ad or from YouTube premium, Google is still getting roughly the same amount of money out of you. If you dislike Google’s actions so much, the only ways to not give them money are either to stop watching YouTube altogether or use an ad blocker. In fact, watching with ad blockers is still the worse option since you are still increasing the YouTubers’ popularity and making the site more visited by other people (who are probably not using an ad blocker)
I avoid it where I can, but some folks only post videos on youtube. It's much harder for a video-sharing alternative to get off the ground because google (and others in big tech) completely distort the playing field.
I think this is evidence that the opinion that creators should be paid is not widespread. It’s interesting that when presented with evidence contrary to your beliefs you question the evidence and not your beliefs.
HN is a bubble. I know zero people outside of my circle of friends and family that know what an ad blocker is.
So are you saying that the majority of people are against paying creators for their work? You mean deep down they believe people should work for free? I'm interested in the evidence you mention.
For me the reason is not supporting YT censorship. Not just the random strikes on accounts, or video de-monetization, but doing things like removing the dislike button, and poking people about “misinformation”.
It used to be you could see the ratio of likes to dislikes on videos, but they forcefully removed that from all videos. YT claimed it was to prevent bullying, but it was always possible to disable likes on your own videos. I think the real reason was: All the major news networks had extreme dislike ratios on their videos, and they wanted to promote that over alt sources of information.
With regards to being compensated, if I want to support a creator, I will just donate to them. Many creators ended up using Patreon due to de-monetization.
